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Phrase: Take (something) at face value
With the Social media and fake news environment we live in today, it’s tough for us to take things at face value.
When we take something at face value, we accept it as it is, are not skeptical about it and don’t look for an ulterior motive.
As I said, that is very hard to do in today’s environment.
Heck, even the president of the United States has had tweets taken down for being untruthful.
If you can’t take at face value what the most powerful person in the world says, what can you?
These days we always have to second-guess everything.
I’m not sure about you, but I find it quite tiring.
The news we read, the commercials we watch on TV or YouTube, and even government reports about our pension plans’ financial health have to be taken with a grain of salt.
Does anyone tell the truth anymore?
Even if someone was telling you the truth, would you believe them?
Probably not, right?
We cannot afford to take anything at face value anymore.
Those who do are either the first to be taken advantage of or naive.
For sure, a healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing.
We should always practice critical thinking by weighing everything we read and hear from various sources, parsing them together and making up our minds about what we feel is the truth.
Most importantly, we should remain open-minded.
It is of the utmost importance not to fall into an echo chamber of opinions and never, never, never take anything at face value.
As sad and tiring as that may be, it is the reality of the world in which we live.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 73.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.